How To Make Influencer Marketing Work For You On Instagram

Instagram is one of the most popular social media applications used by approximately 800 million people across the world. When it was launched back in 2010, it was just a typical social media platform filled with photos, videos, and catchy captions. Now, it’s used by many people to promote their products and services online. 

If you’re offering products worldwide, it’s best to consider gaining followers from countries with the most active daily users. For example, the United States is one of the countries with the highest number of Instagram users. So, you need to get more American followers to establish your brand in America. The same process applies to other countries you want to enter.

One of the best strategies to gain more followers on Instagram is influencer marketing. It works by collaborating with famous influencers and content creators to promote your goods and services using their accounts. They can influence their followers who trust their choices to use what they promote and share online. 

What Are The Types Of Instagram Influencers?

Instagram influencers come in different types, based on the count of their followers. Here are they: 

• Nano-Influencers – those with a follower count not higher than 10k people
• Micro-Influencers – those who have a follower count between 10k and 100k people
• Macro-Influencers – those with a follower count between 100k and 1M people
• Mega-Influencers – those who have a follower count of 1M and above

Contrary to common belief, it doesn’t matter if the influencer you’ll be working with is a nano type. As long as you know how to make the process work for you, even a nano-influencer can help your business grow big and strong on Instagram. 

On the other hand, you may consider combining Instagram growth services with your influencers to maximize the growth and development of your Instagram account. With them working hand-in-hand, no one will be able to stop you now. 

On top of that, here are some of the most effective ways that may help bring your influencer marketing to success:

1. Know Your Goals

The first thing you need to do is determine why you’re doing this. Never try to start this campaign without having goals that’ll drive you to reach the things you want to achieve for your business. Having a clear concept of your objectives will help you create a more robust and effective marketing strategy.

Some of the goals most businesses consider when using Instagram are:

• Improving and increasing marketing reach
• Generating and converting new leads
• Making more sales

If you know the goals you’re trying to achieve, you’ll be able to determine the metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) you need to evaluate your performance. Also, you’ll be able to plan out your goals for each metric you’ll be using effectively. Then, check the system analytics and compare it with your KPIs to assess the success of your marketing strategy.

If your primary goal is to improve your business reach, you need to measure and evaluate every like, comment, and impression produced by your content. If you want to generate and convert leads, you may ask an influencer to share the link to your website. Then, calculate your ROI for every completed purchase made by your campaign.

But, if you want to boost your sales and revenues, you’ll have to improve your strategy for generating and converting leads. Instead of one influencer, you’ll need to work with multiple influencers. You may give them an affiliate link they can share with their followers. Then, track all completed purchases and compute your ROI. 

2. Determine Your Target Audience

When you define your target audience, you want to make sure that they’re aligned with your marketing objectives. This is among the basic rules, yet one of the most vital for the success of your campaign. Once you know who they are, it’ll be easy to set out a clear path that’ll help you construct a winning marketing strategy. 

Moreover, you’ll need to consider some factors to determine your target audience. These considerations will help you reach the right people for your campaign. Some factors include age, interests, location, etc. 

Also, knowing your target audience will help you find the right influencer to promote your brand on Instagram. For example, if you’re selling different skincare products, your target audience would probably be people in their mid-20s and mid-30s. And, your target influencers would be those who do reviews and vlogs about beauty products. 

3. Look For Smaller Communities

Of course, popular and world-famous influencers will boost your reach. But, if you’re looking for a short-term boost in sales and traffic, you might want to consider reaching out to smaller communities. 

Influencers that support smaller communities are one of the best ways to generate targeted and quality traffic. Also, you may consider the following tips to make this strategy work for you when finding a community:

• Check out the websites that boost your traffic.
• Look for groups from other popular social media platforms connected to your brand.
• Check out active users who interact with many people aligned with your brand.
• Visit platforms where many people ask about related brands

These tips will help you approach smaller communities directly, and potentially turn them into sales.

4. Research Your Influencers Well

Nowadays, there’s been a continuous rise in the number of influencers trying to make a permanent living on Instagram through paid sponsorships. Unfortunately, these are coupled with fake people scamming different brands to pay them for low-quality and useless sponsored content. But, first, why are some influencers considered fake?

Fake influencers grow their page’s following count by purchasing likes and followers. Many of these are actually bots. Therefore, collaborating with them would cause a great loss for your company because there are no engagements in the process that’ll contribute to your sales.

When you look for influencers, make sure to conduct a background check on each one of them as much as possible. You may visit their other social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn accounts, to see how they interacted in the past few years. 

Also, investigate the average engagements of their content and check if there are highly-recognized and renowned brands that have previously collaborated with them. 

Following this simple tip will help you determine the right and legitimate influencers for your brand. Also, you’ll be able to prevent fake influencers from stealing away your hard-earned funds. 

5. Consider The Audiences Of Influencers

When it comes to influencer marketing, it’s important to consider the audiences of your influencers. Your marketing strategy should be based on their preferences, not yours or your influencers’.

Take a look at how their viewers engage and get interested in their posts. Audiences with a wide range of interests may boost your impression, but an engaged and targeted audience has more chances of increasing your conversion rate. They’re already informed and constantly looking for alternatives that may address their needs.

It’d be best to partner up with micro-influencers because they have a highly participative audience, an essential factor that drives conversions effectively. Also, they might be open to working with you for a cheaper price due to their fairly small follower count. 

6. Share Control And Responsibilities

Influencer marketing works differently than traditional marketing, wherein every process is under your supervision and full control. In this process, you allow your influencers to take charge and do whatever they want to promote your brand. 

This may actually benefit you more since most influencers are believed to be highly motivated when given the freedom to do what they want. In this way, you allow them to be flexible and let their creativity flow like a stream. Also, influencers know their audiences well, allowing them to interact effectively. 

However, giving your influencers the freedom to do their job doesn’t mean losing total control over them. It’s just that you don’t want to dictate everything they need to do. 

7. Engage With Your Influencer On Instagram

One of the best ways to build stronger connections with your influencers is through active interaction. Also, it’ll help you identify the influencers you’d want to collaborate with. You may engage with your influencers on the content they published on Instagram and start a positive relationship with them.

Here are some other ways that’ll help you engage effectively with your influencers:

• Share most of their content on other social media platforms.
• Actively comment on content that grabs your attention and interest.
• Tag and mention them when you share their content on your account.
• Give them a flattering remark about the quality of the content they produced.
• Tag them on blog posts or content that mentions them.

If you do this regularly, they’ll be aware of your brand’s existence. Not only that, but you’ll also be able to foster a strong relationship while using their influence on many people. 

Furthermore, one of the benefits of interacting with your influencers is that their audiences may discover you, too, garnering more attention and higher chances of making sales. 

8. Choose Relevant Influencers

As previously discussed, you must discern fake from real influencers. Once you know the legitimate ones, it’s time to sort out who’s the most relevant among them. 

Of course, some will claim to be an expert in the field, even if they’re not, as long as they have money to receive. In that case, you need to be careful as to who you’re dealing with. You can check their pages and evaluate their content to determine if there’s any related to your brand. 

Also, a true influencer won’t brag about how good they are simply because they know their worth. These are the people you should head out for. 

9. Compensate Your Influencers Properly

Many influencers are willing to accept free products and services in exchange for advertising your brand. But, it’d be better to compensate them properly. In fact, compensating them may push them to be more active and committed to promoting your business. 

Also, it’s best to partner up with influencers with big names on Instagram. Once you’ve recruited them, it’ll be easy to convince nano- and micro-influencers to collaborate with you. It’ll be easy for them to trust you since mega-influencers are working with you. 

10. Create Valuable Campaign

Collaborating with famous influencers isn’t enough to improve your reach, generate new leads, and skyrocket your revenues. It’s also important to create high-quality and valuable content in line with your influencer campaign to grab the interest of your target audience. 

You may concentrate your ideas to create content that targets a small segment of your audience. This way, your target audience and customers will be able to see your posts most of the time. This will increase your exposure to a small group of people as you gradually enter a bigger market.

11. Give Your Influencers Gifts They’ll Cherish

Compensations don’t always come in the form of money. Sometimes, it’s much better to give valuable gifts that your influencers will cherish for a long time, but don’t expect them to do the same thing in return.

However, you may try asking them to test your products and create reviews on their Instagram accounts. This is an effective technique that works well on a wide range of different niches, such as food, beauty, fashion, and other niches. 

But, remember that giving them gifts doesn’t mean that they’re obligated to promote your brand using their accounts. It’s up to them how they want to show their appreciation for the gifts they received. But, in most cases, influencers advertise products that are given to them for free. This is their way of thanking generous people who support them on their journey.

Final Words

Instagram is a powerful social media tool that allows you to establish your brand and reach your target audience effectively. One of the best ways to use this social media platform is through influencer marketing, where you ask influencers for help to promote your brand on Instagram.

To have effective influencer marketing, you may consider the following tips above. These will help you create a thorough campaign and execute it strategically in a way that both you and your influencers can benefit mutually.